She's a multimillion-selling crop (country-pop) artist, a perfumer, and a maneater. Head over to your local Albertsons and take a gander at the greeting cards section and you'll discover Taylor Swift is also adept at slapping pictures of cute puppies onto cardstock and writing gems such as "Wow. Just Wow," on the front, too.

Yep, the 23-year-old mogul has the card market cornered, partnering up with American Greetings last year for a line of sugary-sweet visual cards that include images of everything from kids doing handstands to hands full of rose petals. So, how do the cards, uh, stack up?

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Conspiracy theories are my comfort food. After all, all a conspiracy is "the action of plotting or conspiring," and not just about tin-foil hats and Reptillians. When Reagan's cronies illegally sold weapons to Iran in the Iran-Contra Scandal, that was a conspiracy. When the CIA sold crack to kids in Mena, Arkansas, that was a conspiracy. When my mother guessed my brother was buying drugs from the neighbors, that was a conspiracy.

When it comes to music, conspiracy theories aren't in short number, but they are lacking in substance. That's probably because musicians have a lot less malicious intent than senators or the Illuminati. But there are some bands that attract conspiracy theories like you wouldn't believe, and The Beatles are at the top of the list. People really, really like writing and believing things about The Beatles (no matter how outlandish). So in honor of former singer Tony Sheridan (he sang with the group when they were called The Beat Brothers and weren't all that famous) who died on Saturday, February 16, I thought it would be fun to dive into the mythological canon and dig up some of the best and worst "Beatles Conspiracy Theories," including a few I made up, because why not?

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Benjamin Leatherman / someone who likes dogs a lot

Left: a rave. Right: my party.

Dear neighbors,

I hate you. Your haircuts suck and your yard is ugly. To make matters worse, you called my landlord and then the cops on me because I was having a party you described as a "rave."

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What would happen if Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez got violent?

Have you had you're eyes glued to the psychedelic prog-rock message boards? If not, maybe you missed the news that The Mars Volta broke up, due in large part to lead guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's focus on his other band, Bosnian Rainbows. But you probably didn't miss the news, because The Mars Volta gets a lot of mainstream attention, despite releasing sprawling, massive progressive rock albums with impossible to pronounce song titles and weirdo album art.

You see, after Volta released its sixth album, Noctourniquet, last year, the El Paso-based progressive rock group went on hiatus instead of on tour. This made TMV's other half, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, feel pretty miffed, so he publicly quit (by publicly, I mean he posted on Twitter) and effectively broke up the band after an 11-year run, asking, "What am I suppose to do be some progressive house wife that's cool with watching their partner go fuck other bands?"

But hey -- Zavala has his own side-project with Mike Watt of fIREHOSE and Christian Eric Beaulieu of Triclops! It's called Anywhere and they released a self-titled album last year.

This brings us the very important question for us bloodthirsty journalists - who would win in a fight, Bosnian Rainbows or Anywhere? BR don't have an album out until this summer, so we'll only have a few YouTube clips to go off, but we'll try to make this as fair as possible. Alright, let's dive in.

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I think everyone has a "forbidden song."

What's that? It's like, whenever I hear the tune "Freebird," whether in the car or at some party or whatever, I have to turn it off. It's like an obsessive-compulsive decision and I will be forever agitated until that song is no longer playing.

I'm not psychotic, it's just that "Freebird" was played at this funeral I went to and it really bothers me to hear that song played so nonchalantly. I can't be alone in this, especially since "Freebird" is a pretty popular funeral dirge.

(And let's not forgot about that disastrous scene in Cameron Crowe's Legolas/Kirsten Dunst vehicle Elizabethtown, when My Morning Jacket embraces its southern roots and covers the song in all its flaming, overblown glory.)

See also:

-Amazon AutoRip: Is There Any Point to Trying to Prolong the Life of the CD?
-The Pazz & Jop 2012 Critic's Poll Is Live
-Mark McGrath & Friends Cruise: Smashmouth, Gin Blossoms, & More '90s Bands -- On a Boat!

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Azealia Banks in the offending "Atlantis" video.

I can't believe there's actually a Twitter war going on (when isn't there a war on Twitter?) over the legitimacy of #Seapunk.

What's that "hashtag seapunk," you ask? Imagine if you took Lisa Frank's fetish for porpoises, ran it through crappy late-'90s Geocities GIFs, and added some terrible, too-clever ocean-themed puns. Now, Zombelle and others that spawned this Tumblr miscarriage are calling out Rihanna and Azealia Banks for "stealing" their "style."

See also: Erik "Riot Earp" King on Microgenres, Beatport, the Future of Moombahton, and Whether or Not Seapunk is a Joke
See also: Isaiah Toothtaker Talks New Record Sea Punk Funk (Free Download)

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See also: Local Wizards: Songwriter Makes "Based Garagebandcore;" We Interview Via Twitter

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The pre-release fanfare for highly anticipated albums has gotten particularly elaborate recently. Avant-industrial legends Swans have the entirety of their latest two-hour, triple-LP epic available to stream on NPR Music, including a track that runs more than 30 minutes. For the past month, Animal Collective has been engaged in a multi-media barnstorm for their latest long-player, Centipede Hz, that involves guest DJs on weekly podcasts and lots of shroom-tracer visuals.

However, those acts too meek and lowly to organize a cross-platform PR blitz have to be a little more resourceful. Kendall Humbert, the 19-year-old prolific tweeter and budding warlock behind eclectic Tempe project Local Wizards, revealed the drop date of his forthcoming new album, The Signal, earlier this week in a practical yet memorably peculiar YouTube video.

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William Westfall

See more photos of Megadeth's 2012 performance at Comerica Theatre.

See also: Megadeth's Dave Ellefson: "Why I'm Trying to Become a Pastor"
See also: Dave Mustaine's Advice for Starving Women in Africa: "Put a Plug in It"
See also: Megadeth's Dave Mustaine is Metal's MVP
See also: Rusty Assault Rifles Found in Madera Canyon Not Part of Fast and Furious, ATF Confirms
See also: Gigantour Featuring Megadeth, Motorhead, Lacuna Coil, Volbeat at Comerica Theatre, 2/25/12

Megadeth frontman and former Arizonan Dave Mustaine has a long and storied history of saying shitty, terrible, controversial, and stupid things. Most of the time we don't really care, because, you know, that's his deal and Megadeth rules. (We even argue that Mustaine is Metal's MVP).

But today Blabbermouth.net posted audio from a Tuesday, August 7, Megadeth performance at Fort Canning in Singapore that takes things to a new, what-the-hell level, with Mustaine stating that President Barack Obama staged the "Fast and Furious" gunwalking scandal, the massacre in Aurora, Colorado, and the recent shootings at a Sikh temple near Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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Sonny Decarlo of Kuato & Quaid

Guitarist Sonny Decarlo readily admits that his sludge metal/crustpunk quintet Kuato & Quaid probably won't to amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

Ditto for his other groups PV Casualties, a sloppy Misfits cover band, and Level T, a weirdo rock ensemble that's featured pots and pans as instruments.

But while the 30-year-old says that while all three acts will ultimately wind up as footnotes in Valley music history (at best), its members are collectively having a blast going nowhere fast.

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After Thanksgiving comes and goes, it seems like just about everyone gets into the holiday spirit.

Even the creepy, strange and misguided among us (which describes most of the lovely Up on the Sun staff, now that we think about it).

We're not sure what these artists were thinking when they released these WTF-worthy holiday albums, and frankly, we're a little nervous to crawl into their minds and figure it out.

Nevertheless, here are some holiday albums that maybe should have been given a second thought before they were given the green (and red holiday-themed) light.

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